Quick Look Plugins

Quick Look plugins ¶

List of useful Quick Look plugins for developers

Install¶

Using Homebrew ¶

Run brew install <package>

Install all¶

brew install qlcolorcode qlstephen qlmarkdown quicklook-json qlimagesize suspicious-package apparency quicklookase qlvideo

Catalina notes¶

To get plugins working in Catalina, you will need to remove the quarantine attribute.

Run this to see the attributes:

xattr -r ~/Library/QuickLook

And run this to remove the attributes:

xattr -d -r com.apple.quarantine ~/Library/QuickLook

Manually¶

Click "download manually"
Move the downloaded .qlgenerator file to ~/Library/QuickLook
Run qlmanage -r

Plugins¶

QLColorCode ¶

Preview source code files with syntax highlighting

Run brew install qlcolorcode or download manually

QLStephen ¶

Preview plain text files without or with unknown file extension. Example: README, CHANGELOG, index.styl, etc.

Run brew install qlstephen or download manually

QLMarkdown ¶

Preview Markdown files

Run brew install qlmarkdown or download manually

QuickLookJSON ¶

Preview JSON files

Run brew install quicklook-json or download manually

BetterZipQL ¶

Preview archives

Note: The BetterZipQL plugin was integrated with the BetterZip app.

Run brew install betterzip to install the BetterZip app and its Quick Look plugin or download manually

The legacy BetterZipQL plugin can be downloaded here.

qlImageSize ¶

Display image size and resolution

Run brew install qlimagesize or download manually

Suspicious Package ¶

Preview the contents of a standard Apple installer package

Run brew install suspicious-package or download manually

Apparency ¶

Preview the contents of a macOS app

Run brew install apparency or download manually

QuickLookASE ¶

Preview Adobe ASE Color Swatches generated with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Color CC, Spectrum, COLOURlovers, Prisma, among many others.

Run brew install quicklookase or download manually

QLVideo ¶

Preview most types of video files, as well as their thumbnails, cover art and metadata

Run brew install qlvideo or download manually

More¶

These are not included in Install all.

Peek 💰¶

Peek allows you to copy and find text, jump to line numbers, render Github-flavored Markdown with a generated table of contents, restore scroll positions, highlight syntax, & more in the Quick Look previews of over 300 file extensions.

Purchase on the App Store.

The app is abandoned and buggy, but still functional.